On October 27, 2017, disruptors in the cryptocurrency field gathered at the San Francisco Ethereal Summit. Sponsored by ConsenSys, the summit provided a diverse mix of panels and workshops that demystified the “initial coin offering” (ICO) or “token generation event.”

Side note: Vernacular is key. Referring to a token launch as an ICO isso "September." The process is now referred to as a “token generation event.”

At the “How to Launch a Token” panel, token generation event veterans Galia Benartzi (co-founder ofBancor Protocol), Matt Liston (CSO atGnosis) and Piotr Janiuk (co-founder and CTO of theGolem Project) guided Ethereal participants through a hypothetical: founding a hat company and funding the development through a token. Here are some of the key points that they discussed.

Step 1: Determine if the token model fits for the new company

Imagine the whole process backward: What layer does the company involve — application, platform or protocol? Design the decentralized concept first and then discern if a token is necessary.

Criteria:

Is the project based on a decentralized model? If not, equity funding is a viable option –– no need for a token.

What is the token’s utility within the network? How are customers involved in the network? For example, is the token facilitating and incentivizing collaboration between the community in the network? If so, tokens (similar to shares and equity in a normal company) are a great way to distribute participation among stakeholders.

Tokens work best when fueling network effects around ideas –– when there are benefits to being an early adapter/stakeholder.

Step 2: Find a strong legal team and a favorable regulatory environment

Regulation in the cryptocurrency space is in its infancy and varies greatly around the world.

Criteria:

Find a competent lawyer with an understanding of the space that can give risk parameters. It is important to minimize risk for the project.

Select a government that defines clear boundaries and has a forward-thinking mentality.

Although blockchains and cryptocurrency promise decentralized disruption to all industries, anarchy would be unfavorable to all. All companies must comply with the law.

Step 3: Work on the prototype phase

Establish a white paper, set up the concept on thetestnetand prove the concept.

Criteria:

White paper: describe your network, protocol and model. White papers should strike the proper balance between being math-heavy and marketing-heavy. The goal is for users and stakeholders to understand exactly what the network is doing.

Prove that your concept works and expose its source code. Everything should be 100 percent transparent to the public.

Trustless (trust forced through code) and transparent networks are critical to long-term success. Secure and validate data by rewarding “oracles,” people who provide trustworthy answers and validate that events did in fact occur. On the flip side, penalize those who lie to the network.

Trust and transparency are paramount for any company that is considering funding its development with a token.

Step 4: Connect with the community

Generating interest for the token and setting the foundation for strong community support before finally launching a token generation event to the public is crucial.

Criteria:

Develop a public-relation strategy. Share as much as possible. Post videos, host AMAs, etc. This process can be grueling, but it is necessary to establish a global presence and field questions.

Prepare for a fast-paced environment. Communication builds authenticity and credibility with supporters around the world.

Listen to outside perspectives and criticisms.

Because token generation events allow for decentralized methods of funding, the company’s diligence process should be decentralized to match.

Tokens generation events are complicated and don’t work for every business type. However, they unlock a new economic driver: permissionless venture capital.

The prime minister of Slovenia’s speech in support of blockchain technologythis week has solidified the country’s position as the leading blockchain destination in the European Union and a key player in the regulatory field.

“After the difficult ordeal of the economic crisis … we are coming back to life, we are growing again, and we are finding that we are creating numerous success stories, which inspire us but also obligate us,” said Prime Minister Miro Cerar. “We have emerged from the crisis stronger. I believe that using blockchain technology, you too will contribute to the writing of a new Slovenian success story.”

The first clear signal that the government was prepared to make some serious moves was during July’s Blockchain Meetup Slovenia 2017, which hosted more than 300 blockchain enthusiasts. Since then, Slovenia has made significant strides in its efforts to become the EU’s key blockchain-friendly destination.

Prime Minister Miro Cerar’s recognition of Slovenia’s blockchain community as involving some of the globally leading developers and entrepreneurs shows the willingness of politicians and regulators at the highest level to understand these opportunities and act quickly. Indeed, five months mean little in the typical context of government and regulation.

Step by step, the distributed economy is becoming a true alternative to centralized systems. The new and ever-arising services are boundless, and go far beyond Bitcoin and into the fields of banking, insurance, new models of creating and sharing content, and more. This globally connected ecosystem already has a market valuation in excess of€140 billion ($163 billion USD).

At the core of a decentralized future is the persistent issue of blockchain regulation. Historically, the law has struggled to keep up with revolutionary technology. As Slovenia’s president, Borut Pahor, also emphasized this week, the age-old question for regulators remains: How can we protect citizens without stifling technological innovation? This is a particularly important question for the country from which the most significant EU blockchain companies originate, including ICONOMI, Cofound.it and Bitstamp, and the country with the highest market capitalization per capita of blockchain projects. We believe that self-regulation, education and raising awareness are important steps toward a safe and innovative business environment.

To address regulatory challenges, Cofound.it, together with blockchain legal specialist Nejc Novak, founder of law firm Novak Rutar, has spent the past five months working intensively with a diverse range of stakeholders, including the Cabinet of the Prime Minister, the Securities Agency, the Financial Administration, the Office for Money Laundering Prevention, the Central Bank, the Ministry of Public Administration and the Ministry of Finance, to clarify a number of key legal uncertainties. As a result, Cofound.it, in partnership with Rutar, is now able to provide robust legal advice to blockchain projects so that entrepreneurs can focus on their products and their user communities, rather than on accounting, compliance and other operational issues.

Slovenian entrepreneurs were early movers in the blockchain industry, and Slovenian blockchain specialists are well-placed to facilitate a workable legal framework for national, European and even global blockchain regulation. Today, Ljubljana is a vibrant market of developers, advisers, investors and savvy businesspeople with some of the most in-depth knowledge and understanding of blockchain technology in the world.

The Slovenian blockchain community is already making leaps and bounds toward a regulatory framework. DataFund, a personal data management solution, will launch later this year in partnership with Cofound.it. This local project is a first example of blockchain utilization and in compliance with the EU General Data Protection Regulation.

The prime minister’s acknowledgment of Slovenia’s advancements in blockchain technology is a welcome move toward wider policy discussions within a rapidly expanding industry. By making some wise and future-focused strategic decisions, Slovenia is already well on its way to becoming one of the most desirable destinations for global blockchain startups.

This is a guest post by Zenel Batagelj, Co-Founder and Head of Team Strategy at Cofound.it. The views expressed are his own and do not necessarily reflect those of BTC Media or Bitcoin Magazine.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) startupSingularityNET, recentlycovered byWiredas “the most tech-hype idea of the year,” wants to democratize AI research and facilitate the emergence of human-level AI on a decentralized, open-source platform.

SingularityNET operates on a belief that the benefits of AI should not be dominated by any small set of powerful institutions but should be shared by all. A key goal of SingularityNET is to ensure the technology is benevolent according to human standards, and the network is being designed to incentivize and reward beneficial players. The startup is developing interoperability standards for AIs, which could radically improve the process of discovering and coordinating AI services, while allowing developers to easily monetize AI technology.

SingularityNET positions itself both as a critical mediator across all future AI developments, as well as a hub for free and open AI technologies owned by the crowd, where anyone can acquire or monetize AI services.

Blockchain-based smart contracts will be central to SingularityNET operations, allowing users to combine multiple AI technologies to create custom AI stacks. The initial implementation of SingularityNET will be built on Ethereum, with smart contracts written in Solidity.

“AI is currently very fragmented and narrowly trained,” Simone Giacomelli, founder ofVulpemand co-founder of SingularityNET, toldBitcoin Magazine. “Blockchain technology and smart contracts make economic collaboration over the internet easier than ever before, aligning incentives mechanisms for different AIs to be optimized as one. SingularityNET leverages this collaborative power to make AI work together.”

At the recent Ethereal Summitin San Francisco, Goertzel showcased Sophia to demonstrate the power of AI and the potential of incorporating AI and blockchain technology to create a decentralized, open-source, blockchain-powered AI network that operates like, and can be thought of as, a thinking brain.

“SingularityNET is intended as a platform in which an AGI [Artificial General Intelligence] can emerge from the combination of multiple humans and multiple human-created software programs, possessing varying degrees of general intelligence on their own,” Goertzel toldBitcoin Magazine. “It doesn't eliminate the need for fundamental algorithmic work on AGI reasoning and learning and memory, but it provides a context in which such algorithmic work can have a rapid, transformative impact.”

Goertzel makes a distinction between narrow AI and Artificial General Intelligence (AGI). While narrow AI programs are finding applications in a growing range of industries, they are not effectively integrated into overall AGI systems with general-purpose intelligence like that of humans. Therefore, Goertzel is persuaded that the next big step in the evolution of AI is going to be the transition from AI to AGI. SingularityNET wants to support this transition with an open market in which various AI algorithms can cooperate and form new patterns of emergent intelligence.

“The actual design that has been formulated is a quite practical system that is being implemented in quality software code and will serve real corporate customers and become a large and lucrative business,” continued Goertzel. “But at the deepest level, the underlying philosophical and emotional motivations David Hanson and I had for creating SingularityNET, are transhumanist ones.”

Goertzel and Hanson are, in fact, among the leading advocates of transhumanism, defined as the prospect of using advanced technology to radically change, hopefully for the better, the human condition. Enabling transhumanist technologies would include life extension, uploading human minds to futuristic supercomputers, and sentient AGI way smarter than humans, which is the target of SingularityNET.

In his 2010 bookA Cosmist Manifesto, which blends transhumanist technology and enlightened spirituality, Goertzel proposed a practical philosophy able to inform the next phases of human history and transhumanist evolution.

“One way to achieve this would be to via brain-computer interfacing — and this is going to happen,” Goertzel toldBitcoin Magazine. “Of course the computer portion of cyborgs made with brain-computer interfaces will jack into this emerging AGI society, economy and culture as well, and then we will get a supermind.”

“This emerging supermind, as it grows, will provide ways for people to earn a living and sometimes even generate tremendous wealth, as part of its growth process,” concluded Goertzel. “And it will donate parts of its resources to the common good of all humans, including underprivileged ones, as a way of helping drive its growth forward toward its objectives of joy, growth and choice.”

Goertzel shared withBitcoin Magazineparts of the draft SingularityNET white paper, a living document still under tight wraps.

“A blockchain-based framework designed to serve the needs of AI agents as they interact with each other and with external customers can enable the emergence of a collective intelligence,” notes the draft white paper. “The use of cryptocurrency and blockchain for AI services provides a number of advantages. It allows AI agents to exchange work and subcontract with a high degree of flexibility, and also enables AI-based microservices to be offered to any customer via easily accessible APIs (enabled by smart contracts under the hood).”

Goertzel, Hanson and the SingularityNET team want to balance long-term visionary thinking with practical market needs and business concerns. In their view, the platform could enable AIs tolearn from each other and collaborate, which would be one of the biggest breakthroughs ever in the evolution of AI, causing a subsequent impact on the global AI market, which is projected to grow from $233.8 billion in 2017 to $3.1 trillion in 2025.

“From day one, SingularityNET will offer AI agents,” continues the white paper. “The open design of the network, and the economic incentives, should then encourage additional AI developers to add their own AI nodes via the SingularityNET API.”

While many nodes will run on powerful supercomputers in the cloud, others will be embedded in Internet of Things (IoT) devices, and humanoid robots like Sophia will be supplied with on-board SingularityNET nodes. The upcoming SingularityNET token, details of which haven’t been disclosed yet, will play a central role in the network’s operations.

The project is about to launch an Initial Coin Offering (ICO) to fund the full development of its platform, to be fully deployed in 2018. “This ICO will allow us to start with a bang,” said Goertzel. “We'll be competing with Google and Facebook...so having a war chest would allow us to take on them more easily.”

Today’s native advertising world, where a publication's editorial content is paid for by an advertiser to promote their product or service is fraught with challenges threatening the ad industry. Due in part to the growing dominance of digital media giants like Facebook, Google, and Amazon, display advertising conversions continue to experience a decline. This trend has spurred efforts to find new solutions for navigating the prevailing advertising ecosystem in a scalable, trustworthy and secure way.

A Viable Solution in the Blockchain?

This nascent technology, which undergirds Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, is certainly garnering attention in the ad tech industry. In the past 18 months, companies likeMadHive,Basic Attention Token (BAT)andadChainhave come to market employing blockchain protocols to applications in the digital advertising supply chain.

One creative approach to solving problems in the ad tech supply chain is an application being developed on the Ethereum and NEM blockchains byQchain. The open source platform will use blockchain technology to facilitates transactional engagement between advertisers and content publishers, while being mediated and arbitrated by hosts. Akin toGoogle AdSense Network, Qchain is targeting a three-pronged approach (advertiser, publisher, and host) with an emphasis on a proof-of-interaction transaction verification system.

What makes Qchain unique as opposed to other adtech blockchain startups is its ability to subtly shift the digital advertising model in a way that’s more favorable to advertisers. User experience and ease-of-use has therefore emerged as a top priority in the company’s development amid an environment of advertisers and publishers who are traditionally fairly conservative when it comes to change. As in the case of BAT, Qchain aims to focus more on conversions versus rewarding users for their attention.

Amid its growing involvement in the intersection between blockchain technology and advertising, Qchain champions the notion that Ethereum and NEM are the two most promising enterprise-centric blockchain hubs currently in development. The former allows for ease in development of decentralized smart contracts; the latter skillfully delivers the Proof-of-Importance (POI) algorithm and the EigenTrust++ reputation system to encourage transactions. Users therefore will have maximum choice at their disposal, opting for the blockchain that most accurately suits their needs.

The infrastructural foundation of Qchain consists of four main elements: the advertiser section, the publisher section, the host section and the marketplace. A user can serve as both an advertiser and publisher.

Qchain’s Multidisciplinary Beginnings

“The members of the team and I are curious about the world, and a wide variety of academic subjects,” said CEOWally Xieabout Qchain’s ambitious direction. “Therefore we like to go where there are complex problems to solve.”

Xie has long been fascinated by complex systems, and therefore saw blockchains are also an extension of that. At the National Institutes of Health, he worked on using neural networks to simulate and replicate human brain behavior. Now at the University of California Irvine he is working on comparing complicated mathematical climate models using Bayesian statistics. “Brains and climate are complex systems, and so are blockchains,” says Xie.

After a few years of following the blockchain industry and its meteoric climb, Xie saw the “third generation” of crypto enthusiasts as well as the concept of tokenization as paths to opening up more opportunities for blockchain technology’s application. At the end of last year, he started brainstorming business and technical problems that could be solved by decentralization and transparency.

While daydreaming in class one day in early 2017 (he’s currently pursuing a PhD in Mathematical Biology at UC Irvine), Xie began comparing blockchain technology with what he had learned working for the social media management firmSprout Social. Xie realized that blockchains could make payouts and transactions in advertising and marketing cheaper and more convenient. He believes that the transparency of blockchain technology makes it easier to spot ad fraud post-hoc, harder to get away with things like SSP arbitrage, and improves the bargaining power of advertisers and publishers in the digital advertising ecosystem. He also appreciates that it allows an easy way to transfer funds directly between advertisers and publishers without a central deposit.

“Of course, my views have gotten more nuanced,” admitted Xie. “I have learned that there are parties in the digital advertising ecosystem that do not want transparency. I am also of the opinion that the decline of standard web display advertising and anemic conversion rates of ads was a far larger problem than ad fraud in digital advertising.”

The first digital marketplace for native advertising

As their roadmapstates, Qchain has recently launched ademofor Qchain Native Direct Buy, the first piece of the platform. This part of the application will focus on creating a marketplace enabling simple and easy transactions of native ad units between content publishers and advertisers.

Xie said, “Native advertising buys are being conducted in an inefficient manner right now. Content publishers have large, unwieldy sales teams and have to do a lot of cold calls. Advertisers have to search for publishers and individually contact them to shop for native ads via phone, email or in-person meetings; they do not have convenient means of seeing available native ad units for sale in one place.”

Here is where Native Direct Buy comes in. Qchain aims to help solve these problems by providing a singular and accessible marketplace for advertisers and content publishers, such as BuzzFeed and Vox, to efficiently transact in native ad units. Blockchain technology, Xie pointed out, contributes to this idea by allowing advertisers to directly pay content publishers through cryptocurrency and potentially future tokenized fiat accounts, rather than going through a centralized deposit system. Additionally, Xie suggested that a Native Direct Buy on the blockchain is more feasible to execute in the short term than a prototypical ad exchange based on blockchain scaling problems that cannot handle high transaction volume.

Xie said that the company is also in the process of developing their second application, Qchain Surveys, which will provide an enterprise paid survey service for marketers, pollsters and academics to inform their research.

“We will add applications in the future as we see fit to fill out the platform and fulfill our aims of building an entire end-to-end ecosystem for digital marketers and advertisers to run their whole workflow on blockchain technology,” Xie pointed out.

Qchain also has taken the rare step of developing a ready-to-employ, fully tested platform in advance of their ICO campaign - an approach that runs counter to most blockchain projects whose white paper/website only campaigns have given the ICO scene a bit of a black mark.

Xie concludes: “We want to be an example of a sustainable, ethical company that grew from a legally compliant ICO. We want to make the sponsored content sales process more convenient and easy for content publishers, so that they can spend more time working on projects that also are not sponsored and satisfy their journalistic responsibilities.”

The hard fork part of theNew York Agreementis scheduled to take place within about two weeks. This incompatible protocol rule change is set to increase Bitcoin’s block weight limit, to allow for more transactions on the network — if everyone adopts the change. Otherwise, it will create a new blockchain and currency thatmay or may notbe considered to be “Bitcoin.”The list of signatories of this agreement includes several of the largest Bitcoin startups and mining pools that, together, claim to represent a majority of users and hash power. Yet, it is far from clear that this2xpart ofSegWit2xproposal really has much support outside of these signatories. Most of Bitcoin’sdevelopment community, a significant number ofother companies, somemining pools,user pollsas well asfutures marketssuggest otherwise.

And now, a growing list of international Bitcoin communities is putting out public statements against the SegWit2x hard fork as well.

An overview…

Seoul Bitcoin Meetup

On October 12, 2017, theSeoul Bitcoin Meetup— the largest and longest-running Bitcoin meetup in South Korea with over 1700 members — was the first user community to put out astatementon SegWit2x. More precisely, in their own words, the group voiced its “staunch opposition to this November’s proposed hardfork.”

In its statement, the Seoul Bitcoin Meetup places emphasis on the manner in which the agreement was made. Typically, changes to the Bitcoin protocol go through theBitcoin Improvement Proposal (BIP) processwhere it is peer reviewed by developers across the ecosystem, whereas SegWit2x went through the New York Agreement, which was forged at an invite-only meeting among about a dozen company executives.

The Seoul Meetup states:

If a select group of CEOs and investors, no matter how benevolent their intentions, can unilaterally make decisions about the consensus rules without public comment and force these changes upon the network regardless of overall consensus, then Bitcoin will have lost the properties that make it valuable in the first place.

Additionally, the Seoul Bitcoin Meetup argues that the hard fork is needlessly risky without offering sufficient benefits to warrant the risk. It also takes issue with thecontroversial decisionof SegWit2x developers not to implement strong replay protection.

Bitcoin Meetup Munich

On the same day as the Seoul Meetup Group, theBitcoin Munichmeetup group also put out a public statement against the SegWit2x hard fork. This meetup group consists of over 2000 members — though only several dozen of them actually engaged in the vote whether or not the statement against the SegWit2x hard fork would be accepted. Thisstatementitself was spread viaphotoon social media.

In its statement, the Bitcoin Munich meetup explains it opposes the SegWit2x hard fork in part because of technical concerns:

Another doubling of the block size so quickly after SegWit seems hasty and might cause further mining centralization.

The statement further argues that a hard fork requires more and better preparation and should include more improvements from thehard fork wish list, and it endorses Bitcoin Core as “the true Bitcoin client.”

Brazilian and Argentinian Bitcoin Communities

The biggest user community also published the longeststatementagainst the SegWit2x hard fork so far. A combined effort between a significant group of Argentinian and Brazilian users and companies, published on October 17,2017, voiced “their deepest concerns over the upcoming November hardfork as mandated by the so-called New York Agreement (NYA), also known as SegWit2x (S2X).”

Not unlike other critics of the hard fork, emphasis was placed on the process that led to the SegWit2x agreement:

The very nature of an ‘agreement’ between a few parties in a decentralized consensus protocol can be interpreted as an aggression against the network.

Similarly, the statement addresses the lack of transparency from SegWit2x proponents, criticizing the notion of a “political compromise instead of a technical upgrade” and the “consensus imposition instead of consensus building.”

Other points of concern include the lack of replay protection, the rushed nature of the hard fork, misleading statements by SegWit2x proponents and much more.

Israeli Bitcoin Association

The Israeli Bitcoin Association is a non-profit organization that promotes Bitcoin and similar technologies in Israel, with an open membership. On October 24, 2017, this association put out its ownstatementon the SegWit2x hard fork.

Slightly different from several of the other statements, the Israeli Bitcoin Association emphasizes the right of anyone to fork Bitcoin and create a new cryptocurrency. That naturally includes SegWit2x proponents.

But importantly, the association adds:

A protocol change in the currency holding the name ‘Bitcoin’, especially one requiring a hard fork, requires overwhelming consensus. The SegWit2x hard fork does not in any way enjoy such consensus, and while this remains the case we cannot refer to the resulting currency as ‘Bitcoin.’

The SegWit2x currency will instead be referred to as “‘Bitcoin2x.’ ‘SegWit2x coins,’ BT2, B2X, S2X or any other distinctive term that the industry will adopt.”

The Hong Kong Bitcoin Community / Bitcoin Association of Hong Kong

The Hong Kong Bitcoin Community in general, and the Bitcoin Association of Hong Kong specifically, put outstatementsagainst SegWit2x on October 25, 2017.

While technically separate statements, both voice their concern about the lack of consensus for the hard fork. The Hong Kong Bitcoin Community — a group of Hong Kong–based companies — states that “the lack of enthusiastic support for this fork among the community is striking.” The association — which mostly exists to promote Bitcoin in Hong Kong — states that “the proponents of the hardfork should kindly ask the Bitcoin community to support them and then only proceed with the hardfork if there is widespread community support.”

Additionally, the Hong Kong groups speak out against the lack of replay protection in the SegWit2x fork.

Due to the combination of both a lack of consensus across the community and a lack of strong replay protection, we consider SegWit2x a reckless endeavor that will cause disruption and harm to the ecosystem.

The Italian Bitcoin Community

The Italian Bitcoin community, more specifically a group of companies, meetups, lobbying groups and other organizations, put out astatementagainst SegWit2x on October 31, 2017.

The statement is largely inspired by an earlierstatementby the Italian blockchain research labBHB, which rejected SegWit2x as “an attempt to perform a political takeover of Bitcoin.”

The statement by the broader Italian Bitcoin community is a bit more compact, but nonetheless touches on many of the familiar points of criticism regarding the SegWit2x hard fork.It reads:

The opposition is especially strong against any action of this kind that could cause huge inconveniences for service providers and serious confusion for users, potentially leading to financial losses: unilateral attempts to appropriate Bitcoin name, logo or “ticker”, attempts to mislead light-clients and SPV wallets on alternative networks not explicitly chosen by them, attempts to launch new coins in a way which leave users vulnerable to “replay attacks” or address format confusion, attempts to attack the network with a temporary hashing-power majority in order to create disruptive reorgs or to slow down the normal activity.

French-Speaking Bitcoin Communities

Meanwhile, the French-speaking Bitcoin communities are voicing their concerns with the SegWit2x hard fork through achange.org petition. It is currently signed by over 1300 people and counting.

The (French) text that accompanies the petition is mostly inspired by and based on the statement published by the Seoul Bitcoin Meetup. Like that statement, this petition emphasizes concerns about the manner in which the agreement was forged, while also noting the lack of replay protection and other problems.

Additionally, the petition includes a call to action to find alternatives for the companies that signed onto and continue to support the SegWit2x hard fork:

We would suggest avoiding the use of services of companies that support the NYA, and we hope to substitute them with alternative solutions.

Are they any more user communities that have put out statements against or in favor of the SegWit2x hard fork? Let me know at aaron@bitcoinmagazine.com.

The global healthcare market is vast and complex, with equity funding to digital health companies having reached $5.8 billion so far this year. Within this space, myriad models of healthcare delivery are being employed as breakthrough technologies areintroduced.

A concept that’s gaining increased attention is the “patient-oriented medical network.” In this model, patients can manage and control their healthcare data through a mobile electronic medical record (EMR) — information they’re able to grant their doctors access to when requested.

This mode of value-based physician-to-patient engagement is designed to impact care quality, cost and patient access across an entire healthcare continuum. One company that’s making a mark in this area is an innovative global digital platform known as Robomed Network.

Robomed is introducing a solution that allows the medical industry to replace the old, prevailing ways of managing healthcare processes with new ones designed to boost efficiency, effectiveness and transparency. This is achieved through the elimination of non-value-added processes and clinical errors.

Robomed Network is comprised of 23 clinics across the world. Through the use of this ecosystem, patients around the globe have access to bureaucracy-free, affordable and quality medical care targeted to their specific needs.

What drives all of this is a medical network managed by a blockchain token, designed to provide the most effective medical care. Robomed serves as the linkage point between health service providers and patients, all tied to a smart contract built on top of the Ethereum platform.

“Robomed’s blockchain is designed to constantly expand available capacity for record-keeping, transactions tracking and accumulation of a diverse database of medical knowledge and clinical pathways applied to treating a numerous range of medical cases,” said Robomed Network co-founder Philipp Mironovich. “We believe that the scope of medical services rendered to patients is bound to grow with the processes for obtaining these services streamlined.”

As a part of the Robomed Network, participating in-network clinics utilize what is known as “Robomed EНR,” a process-automation system geared for medical centers, which includes unified medical data storage and health management tools. Its primary purpose is to integrate all participating clinics into a single information space, allowing various service providers to quickly interact without bureaucratic, financial or legal barriers.

This bridge between the patients seeking quality medical care and access to it is a smart contact. This interactive digital mechanism allows patients to obtain access to a chain of healthcare providers committed to delivering the best medical care consistent with the digital clinical guidelines registered in Robomed Network.

These clinical guidelines are adopted via a constantly updated, competitive and transparent voting process involving the medical and patient community. The goal here is to utilize a diverse set of healthcare treatments and high standards to fulfill patients’ expectations.

Robomed Network issues its own tokens to drive the smart contract engagement between healthcare providers and patients. This elevates service value by granting token owners full accomplishment of clinical guidelines for cases.

Patients engage with the Robomed Network via Robomed Mobile or Robomed Web. The proprietary smart contract technology provides a unique opportunity to create a single system of coordinates with clinical outcomes as a reference point.

Given the possibilities and examples of using the Ethereum blockchain platform, the Robomed Network team is excited about this decentralized, cross-border ecosystem of healthcare providers they’ve created, based on an open smart contract and cryptocurrency.

Robomed’s history goes a couple of years back, to when co-founders Mironovich and Ivan Devyatkov decided to combine their expertise from the IT and healthcare sectors. Mironovich had been involved in the startup of several hospitals, and Devyatkov was involved in scaling up the second-biggest healthcare laboratory player in Russia. This is how the basic version of Robomed EHR emerged.

“Robomed’s mission is to provide equal healthcare to the world,” said Mironovich. “This means that Robomed aims toward constantly improving the effectiveness and efficiency of healthcare services across its global platform.”

Note: Trading and investing in digital assets is speculative. Based on the shifting business and regulatory environment of such a new industry, this content should not be considered investment or legal advice.

Today we?'?re wrapping up The Ether Review and kicking off The Third Web. Some of the remarks I make in this episode are overstated and under qualified. Please feel free to critique any views you disagree with in the comments and if there is sufficient intelligent controversy I?'?ll revisit the subjects in question in subsequent episodes.

This podcast is targeted at industry observers looking for a technical examination of issues on the frontier of what has become known as the blockchain space. However, for those less versed in the field, supplementary content will be published in anticipation of each episode. Failing that, I?'?ll add links in the notes to help along the casual listener.

Blockchain technology, and specifically, the idea of a value-transport enabled internet is no longer new. Looking at the recent history of the space, we see a hockey stick of innovation and investment.

In 2014, just as the first ICO boom launched, I began producing my first podcast, Beyond Bitcoin. It explored the explosion of new blockchain platforms and other innovations in the space.

As exciting as this technology was, common problems existed across all platforms: scaling to support broad adoption, and providing a service the mainstream market would accept.

After speaking with Meher Roy and Tim Swanson about these problems in early 2015, the line of questioning that inspired me to create Beyond Bitcoin came to an end. In that final episode, we settled on a view of the future in which a network of blockchains secured by permissioned validators would enable global value transfer. This made more sense than a future based on permissionless blockchain networks and all the challenges that came with them.

Then came Ethereum. Infinite functionality paired with an aggressive scaling roadmap reopened the question of what might come next, this time examined in a new podcast, The Ether Review.

Two years on, having been immersed in the world of Ethereum, interviewed hundreds of people for podcasts, articles and videos and worked for the largest blockchain centric company in the world - ConsenSys, a disturbing reality has become apparent. We have not moved on from the paradigm of 2014, and the Ethereum scaling roadmap will not provide the performance new use cases need to emerge.

In future episodes of The Third Web, we will examine blockchain scaling, and ask the questions: What are the design trends bringing greater transaction supply to the market? What new business models will this enable? What new services can we expect to see, and what products will be built using those services?

Meher Roy was a virologist working in the vaccines industry when we first spoke in 2014. Today he is focussed full time on the blockchain space and hosts the excellent Epicenter podcast.

Tim Swanson was director of market research at R3 for two years and has recently founded his own research company, Post Oak Labs

That was it! The first episode of The Third Web! A big thanks to Breakmaster Cylinder for the tunes. No social, email, or web accounts just yet but you can reach me on twitter @arthurfalls. Of course you should subscribe on itunes or your favorite podcast manager. this feed will probably still be called The Ether Review but it will update in time.

At the recent Texas Bitcoin Conference I had a chance to have a long talk with Eric Anderson (hacker-named "Eijah") about his new project, Promether.

We cover his history, including a good delve into Demonsaw (a very effective, proven means of anonymous, secure and private communication and file sharing) which has been in use for the last four years.

With the experience gained on securing privacy with Demonsaw, Eric is launching a much more ambitious project to deliver privacy and anonymity to the mainstream, making it easy and rewarding to do so.

Along for the ride in the interview, with his own questions and perspectives on privacy, is Ernest Hancock of FreedomsPhoenix.com, and the Declare Your Independence radio show.

After bouncing back and forth from $5100 to $6100, BTC-USD managed to squeeze out one more (albeit short-lived) all-time high. This article is going to present an update to the last discussion regarding the potential Wyckoff Distribution and provide a more contextualized, macro-view of the current bitcoin market. Before reading any further, I would like to emphasize the word “potential” within the context of this discussion because until the market actually reverses, this is nothing more than a potential market set-up:

Figure 1: BTC-USD, 1-HR Candles, Potential Wyckoff Distribution

When welast discussedthis potential distribution pattern, we hadn’t experienced the first Upthrust (UT) or the following Upthrust After Distribution (UTAD). Both Upthrusts represent a brute-force market test of the bitcoin demand and, as you can see, the Upthrusts were very short-lived and ultimately pulled back to more comfortable price levels.

At the time of this article, we are potentially in what is known as “Phase C” of the Wyckoff distribution. Phase C is meant to intentionally deceive the bullish retail traders into buying and to shake out unconfident shorters. The whole purpose of Phase C is to create the illusion that market wishes to push upward and resume the uptrend while the larger market players unload their liquidity onto the more bullish investors. In the Wyckoff distribution model, the UTAD is the terminal shakeout opportunity and serves to test the remaining market demand before a larger correction follows.

During yesterday’s potential UTAD, one of the top contract holders on OKCoin got liquidated for a 480,000 contract position — or, in other words: $48 MILLION dollars. Yesterday’s liquidation was the largest liquidation in OKCoin history. So, if you feel as if you can’t quite get a grasp on the market and you keep getting stopped out of your positions, just know you aren’t the only one. All of this misdirection is part of Phase C within the Wyckoff distribution model.

Figure 2: BTC-USD, 12-Hour Candles, MACD and RSI Divergence

On a more macro-view, we see clear signs of bearish divergence on both the RSI and MACD indicators. This gives us an indication that the market is struggling to squeeze out new highs and the bullish momentum is starting to die down.

Zooming out, we can see bitcoin has been confined within a fairly clean ascending channel and has well-defined support and resistance along the Fibonacci Retracement set. The channel and Fib set start from the $600s:

Figure 3: BTC-USD, 1-Day Candles, Macro Channel

One thing of note in this macro trend is dramatic decline in total volume (shown in pink) over the length of this ascending channel. The decrease in total volume shows a decrease in confidence as the price continues to climb to new highs. As the volume continues to decline, it indicates a shift toward retail investor pressure and a smaller buying influence from larger, institutional investors.

If the market begins to reverse on a macro scale, we can expect to find support along the Fibonacci Retracement values shown above. Also, on the 1-day candles, there is historic support along the 50 EMA and 200 EMA. Over the course of the last year, bitcoin has yet to successfully break below the 200 EMA (shown in red), so we can expect to see a significant level of support along the 200 EMA.

With the uncertainty surrounding the upcoming hard fork, it’s fairly difficult to anticipate how the market will behave. It’s important to keep in mind that it is entirely possible it could make further moves upward; should the market pick up bullish momentum, we can expect a test of the upper trendline of the ascending channel near the lower $7000 values.

Summary:

Bitcoin is continuing to show characteristics of a distribution phase.

On a macro-scale, Bitcoin is signs of bullish exhaustion in the form of RSI and MACD divergence.

If the market pulls back, we can expect to see support along the macro Fibonacci Retracements.

Trading and investing in digital assets like bitcoin and ether is highly speculative and comes with many risks. This analysis is for informational purposes and should not be considered investment advice. Statements and financial information on Bitcoin Magazine and BTC Media related sites do not necessarily reflect the opinion of BTC Media and should not be construed as an endorsement or recommendation to buy, sell or hold. Past performance is not necessarily indicative of future results.